If you're going around telling Jews who don't observe exactly like you do that they're the bad guys in the Hanukah story, I want you to go look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself - do you honestly think that Matthatias wouldn't have run you through with a sword too?

There isn't a Jew alive today that the Hasmoneans wouldn't view as "Hellenized". They'd be wrong, about nearly every one of us, but that is absolutely what they would think if they saw any of us, from any community or tradition.

They'd be wrong because there is a difference between abandoning our traditions and beliefs, and allowing our traditions and beliefs to grow and change and adapt as we move through time and space. There is a difference between assimilation and evolution.

And in fact, historically, the Hasmonean hard-line on conformism and orthodoxy was extraordinarily bad for the Jews. Yes, they beat the Antiochus and re-dedicated the Temple and that is a good thing. But you can't ignore what happened *after* that.

What happened *after* that is that Jonathan immediately allied with Rome for protection against Greece in order to focus on imposing the Maccabees' style of Judaism on everyone by force.

Then the leadership of the Seleucids changed and in order to secure for himself the role of high priest and completely deprive Jews who sought religious reform of any power, Jonathan *swore allegiance* to the Seleucids.

The entirety of the history of the Hasmonean dynasty is that various factions of Jews fought *each other* over who was most right about how to practice Judaism, and sought to gain power in that struggle by appealing to non-Jewish governments.

The division between religious factions left Judea vulnerable. The dynasty lasted only 103 years before Rome invaded and occupied Jerusalem. It was short-lived in no small part *because* of the in-fighting between people who all practiced Judaism, just in slightly different ways.

The story of resisting assimilation and preserving our traditions is a good one. The miracle of rededicating the Temple is a success worthy of celebration. But it's important to tell the *complete* story. And the complete story is that our divisions are what destroy us.